Sana’a’s airport closure for the fifth consecutive year has left stranded at least 32,000 critically ill Yemeni patients in need of life-saving treatment abroad since the first and last medical flights in February last year.

Five years of restrictions imposed on Yemen’s airspace by the Saudi-led coalition is preventing thousands of sick Yemeni civilians from seeking urgent medical treatment outside the country, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and CARE said today. The airport closure is also causing economic losses estimated to be in the billions over the last five years, worsening further an already dire humanitarian situation.

Vital aid funding will be the difference between life and death for 400,000 children in the world’s largest humanitarian crisis

A pledging conference for Yemen on 1 March is a pivotal moment for governments around the world to step up for the Yemeni people, who have already suffered through six years of a man-made catastrophe. With five million people currently teetering on the edge of starvation and over two-thirds of the country’s population in need of humanitarian aid or protection, the situation could not be more urgent, according to 12 aid organisations.

Aid programmes have helped provide vital water, food, health services and shelters for families driven from their homes or living in villages and cities ravaged by the war.

Last year, donors raised only USD$1.35 billion for the aid effort, barely half of the amount pledged in 2019. Since, severe aid cuts have deepened the suffering: some nine million people in Yemen have had their food assistance halved and 6 million people, including three million children, are without clean water and sanitation services during a global pandemic^[1].

18 February 2021 – CARE is extremely concerned for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) whose safety is being put at risk during the current escalation of fighting in Yemen’s Marib governorate.

Marib already hosted around one million IDPs before violence escalated in January 2020. Since then Marib has experienced periods of heavy fighting, with the highest number of airstrikes across Yemen last year. The UN estimates that 113,000 people have been displaced in the past twelve months, with around 6000 displaced from one district alone in the past ten days; a further 385,000 people could be forced to flee if fighting continues.

CARE and other humanitarian organisations are doing our best to provide lifesaving assistance but the needs in camps and settlements are overwhelming and services for IDPs are extremely limited. Most newly displaced families are fleeing for a second time and lack adequate access to healthcare, water systems and latrines which particularly affects the safety and dignity of women and girls.

CARE urgently calls on all parties to take immediate, comprehensive measures to ease the suffering of Yemenis, including protecting civilians from attack and displacement in Marib and across Yemen by initiating a ceasefire, lifting all restrictions on ports and airports, and renewing inclusive and sustainable peace talks.

A new analysis of the last quarter of this year has shown that 13.5 million people in Yemen face acute food insecurity, including 16,500 people already living in famine conditions.[1] These numbers are likely to increase in the first half of 2021 when more than half of Yemen’s population move into crisis levels of food insecurity. The number of those facing famine could almost triple, according to estimations.

The prolonged conflict  has driven food insecurity to extreme levels. More and more people are being uprooted due to intensifying violence in parts of the country as unemployment rates continue to soar. Food prices are increasingly out of the reach for  large parts of the population due to the continuous depreciation of the Yemeni Riyal.

SANA’A, 14 October 2020 – After almost six years of war, Yemen’s economic ecosystem has been decimated, leaving up to 20 million people food insecure. The combination of armed conflict, COVID-19, and the lack of foreign currency and salary payments has created a precarious situation in which the majority of the population would not be able to survive without humanitarian assistance.

“Economic factors have a direct and devastating impact on the availability and affordability of food,” says Aaron Brent, CARE Yemen Country Director. “Food prices have been rising throughout 2020, adding to the misery of families who were already struggling. “We are seeing an increase in negative coping strategies including selling personal possessions like clothes and furniture, borrowing money, begging and using up savings. The UN has even referred to the ‘spectre of famine’.”

On the eve of the UN General Assembly, CARE calls on UN Security Council members to do everything in their power to secure a lasting and inclusive peace for Yemen.

“Yemen is now at very real risk of entering a seventh year of war,” says Aaron Brent, CARE Yemen Country Director. “And the worst thing is that people – most tragically children – have become used to this situation. They are used to a constant state of conflict; it is their normal. But we must not allow this to be their normal.”

CARE condemns attacks in Yemen’s Hajjah and Al Jawf governorates in the last four days which reportedly killed 18 civilians in or close to their homes, including ten children and four women. This means more families cruelly torn apart and more loved ones lost forever in a country where 80 percent of the population relies on humanitarian aid.

The high level pledging conference on Yemen has come to a close, with funding pledges for the UN’s Humanitarian Response Plan disappointingly low. As countries pledge an estimated 1.35 billion USD in funding – just over half (56 percent) of the 2.41 billion requested in order to reach 19 million people with aid – it is water, sanitation and hygiene that is most urgently needed right now, at a time when Yemen has never had such low levels of funding this late in the year.

Survey* conducted in Yemen reveals impact of funding shortfalls as Pledging conference is held today

Recent funding gaps and other challenges in Yemen will put an additional estimated 5.5 million people in the war-torn country at risk of losing access to life-saving aid, such as food, cash and clean water this year, 24 international humanitarian NGOs said ahead of the Virtual Yemen Pledging Conference.